NAVI eliminate Spirit from IEM Beijing-Haidian to clinch playoff spot

The IEM Katowice champions were made to work hard to come out on top of this CIS derby.

Natus Vincere are through to the quarter-final stage of IEM Beijing-Haidian's European division after beating fellow CIS side Spirit in two close maps. Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov and Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev led the charge for NAVI as the No.4-ranked team bounced back from Sunday's 2-1 defeat to Complexity, with Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy preventing the series from going the distance with a number of key rounds on Nuke.

Spirit were no pushover and gave NAVI a couple of scares, with Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev and Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov both raising eyebrows, but they fizzled out towards the closing stages of both maps to leave the tournament in 9th-12th place.

NAVI came out on Overpass - their opponents' map pick - with all guns blazing as they controlled proceedings from the outset. Spirit went into the break chasing a seven-round deficit as their round wins had been few and far between, despite a solid display by sdy, who had averaged over a hundred damage per round.

After ending the first half with 18 frags to his name and a staggering seven multi-kill rounds, electroNic continued to add to his tally as he picked up a trio of frags in the pistol round to send NAVI further into the lead. Spirit tightened up once they had money in the bank thanks to a dominant display from chopper to push NAVI to the edge, but Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov's troops kept their composure in the dying stages of the game to lock up the map.

Spirit came out the brighter of the two sides on Nuke and raced to a 4-1 lead, but it wouldn't last as then NAVI went on a short run of their own to equalise the score. The game became lively from the midway point of the half as the two teams struggled to get control, with NAVI heading into the break with a narrow lead on the back of a trio of rounds that began with Perfecto's Scout show in the 13th round.

chopper pulled off a miraculous 1v4 clutch in the pistol round, punishing NAVI's players for going at him one at a time. Spirit rode that momentum and put together a string of rounds, with the scoreline blooming to a 12-8 advantage. NAVI wouldn't let the game get out of hand, however, and secured with the map with a dream run that was only interrupted by another moment of brilliance from chopper, this time AK-47 ace that didn't change the flow of the game.